[ale] [OT?]Latitude E-series docking station?

[Dustin Strickland]

Hey guys--

This is a shot in the dark as you are generally smart people, and
as such, probably all use Lenovos. However, I've been having a rough
time with this laptop I'm fixing up for my girlfriend to do her
schoolwork. It's a decent machine- an E5410 with a first gen i5, 4 gigs
of RAM, more than enough hard drive space... Anyway, I won't bother you
all with the extremely long-winded story of the goose chase I was on
while trying to find the source of this laptop's malfunctioning. So, the
relevant parts:

1) I think I've tracked the problem to the power jack. The stars must
be aligned properly, I must burn exactly 9 1/2 incense sticks and
sacrifice a virgin in order for the laptop to receive power with a
known-good power supply. Even then, the middle pin on the charger
won't connect, thus the motherboard won't allow the battery to charge.
For those that don't know, the middle pin is a data line- Dell's
response to exploding laptop batteries, actually. It won't charge
without an adapter reassuring it that it is from Dell.

2) Dell, in their infinite wisdom, has soldered the DC input jack
directly to the motherboard. I do not have the soldering skills nor the
tools available to fix it. Nor do I have $80 for a new motherboard. Or
even $20 for a docking station unless I *know* it will charge the
battery.

Are there any of you in the Atlanta area(I'm in Douglasville/Fairburn)
that have a PW380 docking station that I can use to determine whether
or not this will help to charge the battery? If it works and you would
like to get rid of it, I'd gladly shell out $20 for it too. Thanks in
advance.